Waltzingmouse September Pajama Party - Challenge 1. Doodle Do.

Firstly I must apologise for my long absence from blogging. I haven't been able to create anything recently as my husband unfortunately suffered a stoke at the beginning of August and our lives were turned upside down for a while. Things could have been so much worse though, so we are very thankful for the wonderful treatment he received and that he is continuing to get a little better each week. Given the circumstances, I thought that it would be appropriate to make a thanksgiving card!

I am joining in with the Waltzingmouse September Pajama Party today - you can check out all the details here http://waltzingmouse.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/welcome-to-september-pajama-party.html . Challenge 1 was to create a card and add some doodling. My offering is not so much Cock-a-Doodle-Do but more Turkey-a-Doodle-Do!

I decided that I'd like to create my own Thanksgiving turkey by using the Funky Feather stamps. I also used the small pair of wings from the Fine Feathers stamp set. I chose the lovely oak and maple leaf stamps from the Peace and Plenty stamp set to stamp my background with Memento Espresso Truffle dye ink and the sentiment also came from the same stamp set.

I started with an eight inch square white card blank and added a layer of khaki coloured card which I had stamped with the two leaves. I used the fine tipped end of a Memento Espresso Truffle marker pen to add doodling - trios of small dots, veins on the maple leaves and dots around the frilly edges of the oak leaves. 

I used a grand scalloped Spellbinders die to cut a large scalloped circle from smooth white card. Then I inked up one of the long feather stamps with Desert Sand ink at the top, a stripe of Espresso Truffle ink and Toffee Crunch ink towards the bottom. The feather was stamped repeatedly around two thirds of the circle to form the turkey's tail feathers. I used each scallop as a guide for the first layer and overlapped the feathers towards the centre of the circle (see below).

The photo below shows the detail of the tail feathers, once I'd stamped more feathers in between each of the the first ones.

I used a similar technique (with the addition of Potter's Clay ink) to stamp the next layer of smaller feathers onto a separate piece of white card. This was fussy cut out, doodled with extra markings and added to the card with clear foam tape to add dimension. Then I took another piece of card and stamped the short plump feather to form the turkey's body. I added the wings (from the Fine Feathers set), doodled his legs and feet, cut it all out and added it with clear foam tape. The final layer was the plump feather body again - this time with the addition of a doodled turkey head! Details were added with Memento marker pens and I used more clear foam tape to assemble the turkey. Finally I added a few turkey footprints, some more doodles around the scalloped edging and the stamped sentiment. The photo below shows this in more detail.

My Thanksgiving Turkey was so much fun to make! Thanks for looking!